The Worst Hard Time
One theory in Jared Diamond s Collapse is that soil degradation and erosion leads to insufficient agriculture and a society s demise. In Timothy Egan s The Worst Hard Time, he sets forth in specific and excruciating detail exactly what Diamond outlines in Collapse. Only Egan s book isn t theoretical. It isn t a survey of what s happened in other countries. It s about the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. It s about what happens, right here in the heart of America, when the land is misused, mistreated, and turns on those who depend on it.
Centered in the panhandle of Oklahoma and extending south into the panhandle of Texas, north into half of Kansas and a quadrant of Colorado, the Dust Bowl despoiled 100 million acres. For thousands of years this land had been well suited for grass, bison, wind, and regular droughts, but the lack of wheat fromRussia in World War I caused a world-wide shortage, inflating prices so high that growing wheat on the southern plains became a gold lottery. While wheat cost 35 cents a bushel to grow and sold for 80 cents a bushel in 1910, by 1917 it sold for two dollars a bushel. As Egan says, back then, this was a fortune.
And the money was so good and so easy that, between 1917 and 1919, Americans pushed their harvest of wheat from 45 million to 75 million acres, almost a 70 percent increase. As the roaring twenties turned into the greatest, gaudiest spree in history, dry land wheat farming became a get rich quick scheme.
The self-described wheat queen of Kansas, Ida Watkins, told everyone she made a profit of $75,000 on her two thousand acres of bony soil in 1926 bigger than the salary of any baseball player but Babe Ruth, more money that the president of the United States made. Ripping up the soil became easier with tractors doing the work of 10 horses. While in the 1830s it took 58 hours to plant and harvest one acre, by 1930 it took a mere three hours. And while old timers from the droughts of the 1870s and 1890s knew the grass should not
Centered in the panhandle of Oklahoma and extending south into the panhandle of Texas, north into half of Kansas and a quadrant of Colorado, the Dust Bowl despoiled 100 million acres. For thousands of years this land had been well suited for grass, bison, wind, and regular droughts, but the lack of wheat fromRussia in World War I caused a world-wide shortage, inflating prices so high that growing wheat on the southern plains became a gold lottery. While wheat cost 35 cents a bushel to grow and sold for 80 cents a bushel in 1910, by 1917 it sold for two dollars a bushel. As Egan says, back then, this was a fortune.
And the money was so good and so easy that, between 1917 and 1919, Americans pushed their harvest of wheat from 45 million to 75 million acres, almost a 70 percent increase. As the roaring twenties turned into the greatest, gaudiest spree in history, dry land wheat farming became a get rich quick scheme.
The self-described wheat queen of Kansas, Ida Watkins, told everyone she made a profit of $75,000 on her two thousand acres of bony soil in 1926 bigger than the salary of any baseball player but Babe Ruth, more money that the president of the United States made. Ripping up the soil became easier with tractors doing the work of 10 horses. While in the 1830s it took 58 hours to plant and harvest one acre, by 1930 it took a mere three hours. And while old timers from the droughts of the 1870s and 1890s knew the grass should not